St John's CC Vs Venturers, Sunday June 7th

Venturers 187-7 (30), St John's CC 85-10 (25.2)

Play-Cricket Results

The Boy Scouts are a peculiar, vaguely militaristic but essentially harmless organisation for teenage boys. Scouts are taught silly songs, how to light a camp fire (i.e. elementary arson) and to Be Prepared. In this match, levels of Preparedness varied sharply. Charlie and Mizan were Prepared; Dinesh, Gregory and our opponents Were Partly Prepared; the pitch Wasn’t Prepared.

It’s not often that the grass on the square is longer than the grass on the outfield, but Lansdown, who run this ground (formerly Stothert’s, now something to do with Bath Spa), had been having a personnel crisis, which together with the wet weather the day before had led them to do, well, nothing really. A used pitch existed, with faded markings, apparently left over from Wednesday: there was quite long grass on the rest of the square, but the outfield had been neatly mown. We were told we couldn’t play on it: our opponents, who had booked the pitch, objected, and in the end we were allowed to go ahead. The ground is pleasant but has no facilities (we were reminded of Sulis): there used to be a pavilion, but it was accidentally set on fire a few years ago, possibly by Boy Scouts, and nothing remains. In particular there was no scoreboard. We have a portable scoreboard but Gregory (Not Prepared) hadn’t brought it. There were stumps, but only two bails: Charlie (Prepared) produced two more. Dinesh had forgotten his shirt, but Gregory (a bit more Prepared this time) found a spare, an antique from the late 20th century bearing the old Venturers logo in maroon.

We batted, in a 30-over match. The pitch behaved oddly but acceptably, definitely better than the Ostensibly Prepared pitch we played on last time we used this ground. Comparisons with the pitch for the Lord’s Test were obvious and frequent. St John’s had a good right-arm opening bowler, Not Prepared in black trousers, and an erratic left-arm opening bowler, Not Prepared in a replica West Indies one-day shirt. Those are red, which made it hard to see the ball. After one over, consisting of six good balls and five wides, the left-armer was replaced by a young outswing bowler, who was correctly dressed and accurate. We proceeded cautiously: Jaideep outscored Mizan substantially, but gave the black-trousered bowler (Aziz) a return catch after half a dozen overs. Then the left-armer reappeared at the other end, and after a couple more wides bowled Charlie with another good one. Joji insisted that he should bowl in clothing of a contrasting colour, and not bowl when there was a train going past, so he finished the over in a light blue pullover, and found some whites from somewhere later.

Joji, dropped twice, provided a bit of acceleration but Mizan was still not fluent, and was run out by a direct hit from Aziz. Naveen also started cautiously, and Joji dominated that partnership. It ended when Joji was hit on the back leg by an offspinner, and walked off without waiting for Gregory to give him out. He nearly got away with it, because the bowler had run down the middle of the pitch and Gregory could only just see enough to be able to make any decision at all.

Sam, somehow, started confidently, and as Naveen had now got going, which usually takes him a while, they scored rapidly. They were helped by some more erratic bowling (St John’s gave just about everyone a bowl), but there was also some good stuff: a very young spinner caused Naveen real difficulties. In exactly ten overs they added just under a hundred runs, putting the target out of reach. Naveen hit two sixes and was sufficiently in control to place the ball into the gaps, showing that the pitch was not, at that stage, especially bad: Sam was clinical. Eventually Naveen wandered past one and made no attempt to get back. Monish hit his first ball for four, and we arrived at the last over with 200 in our sights. Immediately Sam nudged a single, and we made no further contact with the ball. Monish was beaten by the next one and was leg before trying to turn the third to leg. Dinesh, instead of returning the strike to Sam, swung madly at all three balls he received. He got nowhere near any of them, and the last one splattered his stumps.

The opposition had Prepared tea: not the drink (though there were cold drinks) but thoughtfully vegetarian sandwiches. This is a rarity since covid, but St John’s do not play many afternoon matches and they weren’t going to pass up the opportunity. Moreover, Mizan, remembering how cold everybody had been at Thursday’s match, had kindly Prepared coffee, and handed that out to anybody in need. Dinesh and Imran, thus fuelled, started with a maiden each. The first attempt at aggression came off the fourteenth ball of the innings, when the competent-looking opener tried to hit Imran over Sam at mid-off, and didn’t succeed. The first runs came off the twenty-third ball, Dinesh and Imran each bowled somebody, and after eight overs the score was 12-3.

Aziz and another Sam were batting, both clearly capable. Mizan was tried, but he was not as effective as he has been recently, for no especially obvious reason: however, Gregory proved even harder to score off than the openers had been. Sam replaced Mizan and got hit around a bit: Imran instructed him to bowl slower. He didn’t, and got hit again. Imran repeated the instruction. Sam obeyed, and confused and then bowled the other Sam, actually with a quicker ball. A sharp collapse followed: two more got bowled by Sam and one by Gregory, and in between the left-arm bowler, batting right-handed and in whites, gave Gregory a return catch.

Bruce bowled a tidy over, for most of which Ash, who had come in during the collapse and can definitely bat, was desperately trying to get back on strike. He eventually succeeded when Monish’s return to the bowler’s end landed in the long grass and skewed out of Bruce’s reach. One batsman charged, the other didn’t, Naveen threw rapidly but inaccurately to the keeper’s end, Joji retrieved the ball but fell over, and they escaped. Ash then got stuck at Bruce’s end, leaving Dinesh to clean up number 10; but number 11 was solid and we made no progress. We did drop two catches, both off Bruce and neither particularly easy. Naveen also had a go with no success, and it was Jaideep, having a rare bowl, who picked up the last wicket through a simpler catch by Mizan.